ST. JUDE: You’ve heard that the PGA Tour follows the sun, but the truth is that it follows the perfect weather: Hawaii in January, Florida in March, the Deep South in early spring, and the Northeast and Midwest in the summertime. Rarely will you see the Tour’s brightest stars playing in weather so cold they can’t feel their fingers, or so hot and humid that they can’t walk to the first tee without their shirt being soaked through with sweat. This has long been a scheduling priority: make things as comfortable and pleasant as possible for the players and fans in attendance.
There’s one priority that takes precedence over that stuff, however: money. Outside pressures over the past couple of years have forced the Tour to figure out a way to pay their top players more while keeping the golfing public interested beyond the year’s final major. And they needed to find a sponsor to foot the bill for these ballooning purses.
Enter FedEx, and the FedEx Cup Playoffs, which kick off this week with the top 70 players on the points list teeing it up in Memphis. Following this week the top 50 in the standings will move on to next week’s BMW Championship in Colorado, and after that the top 30 will finish off the year at the Tour Championship at East Lake in Atlanta.
Which brings us back to the weather… as anyone who has been to Memphis in August knows, the climate this time of year is anything but pleasant. The heat will be sweltering — an Extreme Weather advisory is in effect for Thursday and Friday, as temperatures are expected to approach 100 degrees Fahrenheit both days — and the players will be reminded that it’s not January in Hawaii anymore as soon as they step out the door.
The Tour has been visiting Memphis in the summertime for decades, and due in large part to the unpleasant climate they were rarely able to get the big names to show up (Tiger famously never played the event). But Memphis is the corporate home of FedEx, and when the PGA Tour needed a big pile of money to keep up with LIV, there was only one major sponsor who came to the rescue. And that’s how this tournament, which has long been FedEx’s flagship event, became a Playoff event. Now everybody gets to experience the wonders of Memphis in August.
The course is a familiar one: TPC Southwind has played host to this event for the past 35 years and has changed very little in that time. A par-70 that measures a shade over 7,200 yards, it doesn’t kill the players with length, but with tight fairways, sticky Bermuda rough, small greens and water hazards in play on more than half of the holes, it’s no pushover. Rain and soft conditions can make the course a bit friendlier, but it looks like the players won’t be seeing that sort of relief until the weekend at the earliest. Southwind has a few clear birdie opportunities– the par-5 16th comes to mind, as well as the par-5 3rd– but for the most part it’s a grind out there, with numerous doglegs that force the players to put the ball in approximately the same spot off the tee and approach the small, firm greens with mid-irons. It’s a good test that produces a worthy champion every year– there’s no “faking it” around TPC Southwind.
Another thing Southwind often produces is exciting finishes: this tournament has been decided in a playoff in each of the last two years, with Lucas Glover outlasting Patrick Cantlay a year ago and Will Zalatoris picking up his own playoff victory in 2022. Glover didn’t even make the field this year, finishing 78th in the FedEx Cup standings, while Willy Z has been struggling a bit himself and is currently trading at around 150/1, so I have a feeling we’re going to see some new blood in the winner’s circle this year. With that in mind, here’s what I’m thinking:
WIN MARKET
Recommendations to BACK (odds in parenthesis)
Collin Morikawa (17.0)- While the temptation to back Scottie Scheffler (5.1) is as strong as ever given his meteoric brilliance, his record at Southwind isn’t particularly strong, and he isn’t the only guy in the field who has been playing some great golf recently. Morikawa has been knocking on the door all summer, finding the top-5 in 4 of his last 8 worldwide starts and finishing no worse than 24th in that stretch. Given his quality of play this season it’s almost difficult to believe that he hasn’t broken through for a victory, and he’s got a great opportunity here with a limited field and a course he loves. Morikawa’s tight little fade off the tee and precision iron play are tailor made for Southwind, and he has feasted here, finishing 13th last year, 5th in 2022, and never worse than 26th in four career appearances. He’ll be in the mix on Sunday, and if he’s going to beat Scheffler, history tells us that Southwind might be the place to do it.
Hideki Matsuyama (30.0)- Matsuyama’s bronze in the recent Olympic competition further cemented his status as a national hero in Japan, but it shouldn’t have come as a surprise to anyone paying attention to his trajectory this season: with a victory and five top-15 finishes in his past 10 PGA Tour starts, Hideki is officially “back” after a couple of down years by his standards. Not only has his ball-striking been brilliant, as he ranks 4th on Tour in strokes gained tee-to-green, but his short game has been even better — he actually leads the Tour in strokes gained around the green, which is something that is almost unthinkable to those who still remember a young Matsuyama struggling with his chipping. A Playoff victory would be a great way to cap off a successful season, and Southwind is a place where Hideki has shined in the past, finding the top-20 here in each of the past three years and finishing runner-up in 2021. He’s worth a bet at a price like 30.0.
Brian Harman (106.0)- Harman has very quietly put together a good season, finishing 20th in the FedEx Cup standings after racking up ten top-25 finishes, including three top-10s and a runner-up at The Players. It’s been quiet because he hasn’t contended for victory much in the past few months, but he’s been playing some really solid golf, with six finishes of 26th or better in his last ten starts. Harman has a history of sneaking up and winning big events in situations just like this… playing well but under the radar, on a course he knows and likes. Southwind is such a course — Harman grew up on Bermuda-covered tracks just like it and generally plays his best golf in the Southeast, and he’s had some close calls in this tournament, the most recent being a 3rd-place finish in 2022. He’s a threat this week and should be backed enthusiastically at such an inflated price.
